No, this guide is not a step-by-step intro. It is a view into the community and the way the game is played (the metagame).  I want to clear up a bunch of misconceptions, and and false expectations, thereby making you understand that if you can not accept or see yourself living within the points mentioned, then do not bother installing Eve client. The hard facts in brutal form:

1. First thing you will loose hair about and gain blood pressure is lag. From time to time you have Graphics lag, Network lag, and Server lag, and you will have at least one type of lag at any given time. Be prepared to contend with all 3 types at the same time often. There are some good guides around to set in-game and out-game settings to limit some of the lag - look on the Eve Forums. You will loose your ship to it, and it will not be reimbursed. Learn this phrase: "Our server logs show nothing". A lagged server does not log lag, does it? NPC or players killing you while you stare at a blank screen does not get logged as abnormal. According to the server you was there and active. Make your own life and customer relationship easier and better and forget about claiming for lost ships.

2. Second issue that you will have to contend with is the community. Community implies some unification and collaboration, where a group of individuals work together towards one common goal. Eve community are unified towards the common goal of mutual destruction. That is the only "community" there is. Expect to find lesser goals in the corporations and alliances, based around the same ideal. As long as you play within their prescribed playstyle you would do well. Deviate from that and friends become enemies in a blink. Always remember the ideal is mutual destruction, including your own, by any means available.

3. Trust none. Be warned there are no nice people on Eve, they are all out to get you. Being paranoid in Eve will save your ship, isk, and yourself countless times. There are several ways to get scammed, none of which you are aware of when you start to play this game. Do not accept gang invites. Do not accept contracts. Until you know what these things are and how they used properly, do not accept them. Buy from the market, or trade while docked in station only. How could a nice and friendly dude giving you free stuff by using a jetcan in space be wrong? Take from that and die - Trust None. Need help on a mission? Some stranger from local extends an offer and a gang invite. Click and get ganked by 5 ships - Trust None. Show me a nice person in Eve that will not backstab you and/or steal your stuff, even after years of online friendship - I have been gaming Eve for 5 years and have seen alliance leaders tip the piggy bank after many years. I have lend isk and stuff to players after years of "friendship", only to see how it goes unpaid and never-returned.

4. Look out for number one only. The sooner you realise you are alone, and have to rely only on yourself to get by, the better your game experience will be. Eve is a MMO yes, but it is far removed from a collaboration - it is a PvP game in every sense of the meaning. Player versus Player is they key, the motto, the vision, and the method of this game. They are all out to get you. They will use every means available to relieve you of your ship, your isk, and your life. Continously assess every situation and every person to gauge their motives. Remember this game revolves around PvP and they want to win at it.

5. PvP is not just ships slugging it out. Smacktalking, scamming, griefing, are all methods of PvP. Getting you give up playing Eve in disgust is a PvP win for them. You only going to play PvE and do missions and chat with friends? Quit right now - Eve is not the game for you. You do not have the personality or the spine to play Eve. Harsh? if you for one moment expect other players to respect your chosen playstyle you are sorely mistaken. They will hunt you down in your mission, steal your loot, and kill you and loot your fancy ship. Think you are going to sit in a belt and mine? They will suicide gank your mining barge for the LoLz - just to grief you. They will flip your can, steal your ore, then pod you. Remember isk is easy to come by, setting up a ship to suicide gank costs them nothing, and all the loot/ore you drop is profit.

6. But the Box says Trade and Explore and ... And since when do you believe marketing crap printed on a box? Do you think they would sell: "Gank Online - come be a noob so our long standing customers can grief you"? Get real. You are fodder, you are a noob that begs to be scammed and killed. Just because they can, and I promise they will. If you want any other playstyle either do it after you can PvP, or do not bother at all. This is not Crafting Online, or Mining Simulator II, or 3D Spreadsheets. This is Eve Online, a dark and brutal virtual world where your frozen corpse gives someone else a hard-on. Other people will spend and lose 100's of millions of isk just to grief you, for the only return/profit of your spineless whines in local or on the forums.

7. A new player will never catch up. Its the truth - you start at a disadvantage and you stay that way. The quicker you accept this and start to work around it, the better your game experience will be. Use the same tactics as they do - steal, murder, scam, ransom, to get ahead. Its the only way to catch up. Learn the metagame, transcend it, play their game against them. Its pixels on a screen, and some spineless pimply whiner sitting in a dark basement somewhere in that ship, just do whatever you can to get one up on him, else he will do it to you. Your sense of honor, morality, will get you griefed by those who realise those things are meaningless in a virtual world.

8. Start the game the right way. Use a trial account to check it out. If you do not get podded at least once, you have wasted your time, and have not even come close to seeing the possibilities the game offers. If you can show at least one hate mail addressed to yourself, then you have done it right. Then you can subscribe and enjoy the game. Then go and buy a lot of Time Cards, sell them, buy a decent character, and get your bum into some decent ships. Whyever would anyone be bothered to claw their way up a glass wall? Do not bother to train up a character if its your first character, you going to do it wrong and waste a year. Buy one, then learn to play. After 6 months you will either sell it and stop playing, or start a new character knowing how to do it right.

9. Fanbois and Forum Whores rule Eve. Do yourself a favor and never open Eve Official Forums. Do not bother posting a question, you will be flamed and insulted. Ask your questions in the ingame help channels. Never offer an opinion, you are a noob, do not know the game, never will. Save yourself the pain and effort. Do not EVER compare Eve to any other MMO, they are not better, they all suck. Eve is the game for Uber and 1337 players, and World of Warcraft is for noobs. Do not mention that game, or any other for that matter. You have been warned.

10. You are bashing Eve. Perhaps I am bashing the "community", not the game itself. The players is what makes the game and the metagame. They are what they are, they play the game within certain rules, they create the dominant culture. If you do not like what I have said, then get a reality check and go read Eve Forums, or just watch local.

Eve is a good game. From a technical and gameplay perspective it is definitely one of the better games. WoW is also good, Guild Wars is also good. They all are but they cater for different players and playstyles. Eve is not perfect by any means, and they can learn a few things from those other games. Decide what is your playstyle, what you want to achieve by playing a game, how much of a time sink you are prefered for. Then decide which one of these games are best suited for you. Try them all before deciding or settling on one. If you are an experienced online gamer you will do like other experienced gamers do - we play them all. Yes, I play WoW, I play GW, I play Eve, and a few others. When one gets boring, or too much for the blood pressure, we play another for a while.

Good Luck with Eve.

There's nice guys in Eve by then way. I'm a nice guy. I'll blow up your ship if given the chance, but if you ask why I'll explain it to you. That's being nice ;)

Alot of good warnings here, but I'd like to comment on a few things:

As long as you're thick-skinned, I wouldn't worry too much about the Eve Forums. Forum Warriors will always be looking for a fight (and as usual with the internet: everyone is a comedian), but as long as you're not acting like a muppet, you'll end up with your question answered at some point.

Lag comes and goes. It'll be nasty in trade hubs and at fleet wars, but in small gangs and solo you shouldn't have much trouble with it, and with some luck you'll never even experience it. There'll be times when it ruins your day, but another time it'll play to your advantage and ruin someone else's day instead.

Even though you can't technically "catch up" with veterans - you can still kill them. The best way to do this is by teaming up. He has bigger toys? You go get more small toys.

You _can_ have success at playing the trade game. The vast majority of players will be out shooting eachother, but every now and then there'll pop up stories about people that started with their 900K ISK from the tutorial and bought low, sold high untill they were bloody rich. There's a few guides around for how to get rich on industry and trade which you should look up if that sounds interesting.

You can't trust people, but try to find a corporation you can trust anyway. Eve is better when you're not alone.

Read up on Eve. 75% of all traps and mistakes can be avoided by doing your homework. (90% of all statistics are made up on the spot.)

I think I sense some bitterness from the OP. Anyways, a fun to read and it even sometimes touches upon relevant issues.

My Rules for EVE Survival:

1) Trust is a valued commodity. Do not give it away for free, or you will be taken advantage of. That said, find people you can trust. I have a person I can trust, if only because if he doublecrosses me I know where he lives. ;)

2) Everything you have when undocked is at risk. This includes your ship, the fittings, your clone, and your implants. This is the cost of doing business in EVE: You can manage the risk but you cannot completely nullify it. Don't fly it if you can't afford to lose it. This applies to your cargo too. A 100k ship with a 100mil cargo is known as a 'pirate magnet'. And you can't insure cargo.

3) Lag has never killed me. It is annoying, but you can deal with it (unless you're in a fleet fight, but then your survival's a crapshoot anyways).

4) Never take a deal that sounds too good to be true. If someone wires ISK into your account, that's all right. If someone tells you they have cool loot in a can for you to pick up, and they're not in your corp (NPC corps don't count for this), don't take it. Same with deals. Someone selling a 100Mil ship for 10M, most likely it's not the real thing.

5) Ships and pods come and go. Don't get too attached, or conduct your riskier business in another, less emotionally important ship.

6) People who gank/pirate/pod you aren't worth getting upset over. Learn the lesson, move on. Opening your mouth on the local can get you banned from the game if you get personal enough.

7) Watch Local. Don't read it. It's there to show you who's in system, not for smacktalking. You see your enemies there (red symbols etc) and your friends there (green/blue symbols). Keep your local open at all times.

8) Use the map, use the map, use the map. The map is a most useful tool. Learn to use the filters to see where the hotspots are. If there's a 100 ships/pods killed during last hour, it's a safe bet the gate's camped. Use caution.

9) Don't go solo, get friends. Your corpmates can shoot you anyways, so you can trust them when it comes to things that would give kill rights to someone. You can join gangs with them, you can fly missions or mine or PVP alongside them freely. This does not apply to people in NPC corps.

10) Read the Forums. There's lots of useful info there, especially on the beginners forum. Just stay clear of CAOD if you get sick of people yelling at each other..

Fun read was fun.

Well, OP was a bit of exaggerated cynicism, but it was a fun read.  Can't say you won't find all the things he mentioned, but its all in the presentation I suppose.

I like the game.

This thread was harsh and sound with tad of bitterness.......but it need to be said!!! great job! if your new..beware! How ive learned this the painful way!!! Ive lost 5 ships in the last 2 weeks ive been playing and had to start over once i i knew what i wanted to do!

On the flip side Ive met some cool ppl in the game so I dont think the community is as bad as you think...at least from my perspective.

I've had the opposite experience with Eve, I have never logged on and met an unkind person. I've been podded once and that was because I was exploring low sec in a frig, trying trade routes. Other than that the player base was kind. I even got 500k isk free once from a fellow trader. I didn't play the game much though, honestly.